


Grounding

by dramatorama



Series: The Rooftop Club [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4981543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatorama/pseuds/dramatorama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is so young, and he is so old. </p><p>(Happy birthday, Vincent.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grounding

 

The rebuilt WRO tower has a new lightning rod at every cardinal point on the roof, and tonight it seems to Vincent that they are straining brightly upward to meet the clouds gathering dark and low to the west. The air is hot and thick even this high up. He likes to watch lightning, and tonight there should be a storm of storms. Yuffie is climbing up behind him. He can hear the tap and scrape of her cat-light feet against the sills and gables as she scales the southerly wall. His suit feels too heavy. He loosens his tie and braces his arms against the brick of the retaining wall, rolls his shoulders. Many of the staff come up here for t'ai chi in the mornings, led by their chief intelligence officer; the roof is walled all around with beds of sweet lavender and honeysuckle. The green things have begun to grow around Midgar once more. Vincent much prefers it up here to the sickly smells of cologne and spilled champagne down below at the post-summit party.

He turns to see Yuffie come tumbling _down_ from one of the metal scaffolds. She must have come up by grappling the thick and tangled earth-wires that run down each corner of the building. He raises an eyebrow at her. “If lightning had struck while you were climbing, there'd be no need for a cremation.”

“Oh, it struck already. _Twice._ ” She leans into him for a moment as she passes by; Vincent feels the skin of her bare arm brush his, and he realises that it has been a very long time since they last spoke in private. Yuffie's wearing a thin cotton dress and hiking boots with no socks. He thinks of the plucked and sweating crowds in formal wear downstairs, and can't help but smile just a little as she produces two gilt-edged cards from nowhere. She rolls her eyes at him. “They were in my bra, I'm not a magician.”

“You're pretty good at making things disappear.”

She ignores that.“You see these? _Calling_ cards, man, what is this, colonial Banora?” Yuffie leans over the edge of the roof, raising her arm as if to toss them away. But she's smiling, and he notices that both the cards have a PHS number scrawled on the back. By virtue of her position, she's probably the youngest woman at the party by at least ten years - barring Elena, who will be too busy watching Tseng to notice any other man.

He doesn't tell Yuffie that she is the most beautiful, because she will think he's joking, and won't believe him. It's obvious by the way she stares at the numbers that this kind of attention is not something she's used to yet. He takes her in, remembers how it felt to be young, to flirt with pretty women. A wind is rising, freshening the air, and Yuffie's dress flutters against the backs of her thighs. Her legs are very long, but she has grown into them.

“Hey, Vin _cent_.” She jolts him out of watching her. He lifts his jaw to brave the moment out, but she doesn't seem to have noticed. Yuffie rests a hip against the wall, cocky and nonchalant with her hair falling in her eyes, like a boy with a fresh hand of baseball cards - or, perhaps, a hustler with a pocket full of aces. “I can't tell which of these is which guy's number. I already forgot their names.”

  
“Maybe you should go back down to the party and find out.”

Her sharp elbow finds a spot between his ribs, and digs deep. “You're such a kidder. I hate those dorks. Especially the ones who hand over their number like it's a _present._ ” Of course she would – she's another breed entirely. For all of her father's pretensions, Godo raised a thief, not a courtier.

“I mean it. You're young, and these are your peers now. You should take one home to show off to your father.” She does this to him somehow, kindles the urge to needle and prod with his words. A lesser woman would crumple under the onslaught – but that's unfair; Yuffie is notoriously thick-skinned, but she doesn't seem to be taking this well. He swallows. “What do you _want?”_

She jerks her face up, her hands ball into hard little fists. She steps closer to him, then closer, until she is staring right up into his face, still silent, but radiating sudden fury. He can't seem to interject, to find the words to stop this before it starts. One of her arms jerks backward and stills; she bites her lip and half-turns away.

“I'm not interested in those guys, Vince.” Yuffie opens her hand and the cards fall down, down, down, tumbling toward the party below like gliding birds. She takes a breath that hitches in her throat, and when she turns back around, there is a smell about her, or a look – he doesn't know - that is predatory. She takes another deep breath, halfway to a sob, and takes one quick, brutal step toward him and pulls him down by the collar. She kisses him once, hard, and pulls away to look him in the eye. Then she swoops back, beautiful and utterly, utterly deadly. Vincent, rattled and reeling, is caught up in the brightness of her eyes and the softness of her, then the heat of her mouth as she kisses him deep, her whole body pressed against him so tightly that he has no room to push her away and run. He lets her pull him down in her arms, the wall rough against his back, lets her bury him underneath her because she is tiny, fearless, unsinkable.

 He can't be the one to break her, though a cold and measured rhythm is beating at the back of his skull to the tune of _this will not end well._ He remembers the spring-hare madness of twenty-one, and he can see how it _could_ end. Vincent doesn't think he could bear to let her do this with a cruel man, someone who would break her heart wilful and smiling. So he kisses her back, one hand going up her skirt along the long, smooth line of her thigh to graze her underwear; only as his palm skims across does he realise that it's barely underwear at all, it's as thin as cobwebs and he can feel the heat of her skin through it. He can't stop himself from reaching for her with both hands to feel the shape of her, to take her measure.

 Above them, the sky is darkening. He shuts his eyes against it and presses his forehead to hers as he goes from her waist, to her hips, to her lovely curving behind and the soft skin at the inside of her thighs. Yuffie trembles as she grinds down into him, kisses him all lips and teeth as her fingertips dig into his neck, and he can't help but arch up in response; she _is_ lovely, and she would be wasted on a boy her own age. She makes a delicious little gasp, shoots him a look that is all gleeful surprise. It takes him back to other summers, other women who had straddled him, grinning, and cast themselves away to his touch.

 The hair at her temples is starting to cling to her face; suddenly he wants to see her soaked, pleading with him. He brushes the hair from her cheek with one finger as he eases her dress over her hips and upward, upward. She follows his lead and pulls it over her head to toss it aside, taking her bra with it with one flick of the wrist at her back. Leaning into him, she kisses him again, softer this time, and he can feel her nipples through his shirt. He takes one between his fingertips, pinches it as gently as he can manage. He hasn't felt his blood come rushing like this for years – Yuffie grinds against him again, harder, gripping his upper arms.

 He pulls at both her nipples this time, slowly, letting her guide him with her hips and her voice. The low noise she is making might send him mad; he reaches down with one hand and it becomes a moan. She is biting her lip, head thrown back, and his hand is pinned between her thighs as she moves. This is a picture he never thought he'd see, sacred and profane; the guilt comes flooding in, but is beaten back by her quick little hands at his belt, bending her knees up for a moment to strip him - “ _Yuffie-”_ and it's a feeble protest because she is still in his lap, straddling him, controlling everything that happens. She rubs herself against the length of his cock, wet right through her underwear, and he can't stand it any longer. He works one of his hands under the elastic. Just as he pulls down she jerks away, _hard_ , leaving him with a ragged little scrap that he tosses to one side. She leans her face into his cheek, and he can feel her grin as he reaches for her hips again. “Never figured you for a panty-thief, Vince.”

 He settles himself between her thighs, moving between her lips in hot, slick rhythm. She gasps and her smile becomes a kiss, then another, deep and slow, as she rises a little and then pulls him closer to take him inside her. He succumbs, murmuring unholy curses against her neck as the first drops of rain begin to fall. The air around them, time itself, feel slow and heavy, of little consequence. The two of them are everything. The tiny sounds he's hearing could be her or they could be caught back deep in his chest. It's like breathing, it's like dreaming, like closing his eyes and falling into deep and still waters; he needs her warmth, he needs to _feel,_ and his brain flies into sparks whenever she rocks forward. All he can do is cling fast and let her take him, her mouth hot at his throat and chest, one of her fists wrapped tightly in his hair.

 He remembers suddenly, awfully, taking Yuffie from the darkness, and how small she was then, as she comes gasping into his neck. Her face falls wet against his chest. She is so young, and he is so old. Vincent thinks that perhaps he could let her grow tired of him, that he could dash himself against the rocks of her indifference. She's still kneeling over him, eyes glazed and distant for a moment before giving him that familiar, wide smile. “Come _on,_ Valentine,” she whispers, “finish what you started.” He lifts her up onto the wall, her arms wrapped loosely around his neck. There's a fierceness in him that he doesn't dare to give a name, and it's this he gives her: the secret violence, the rush of wings. Her legs tighten at his back and he reaches down to touch her again, until her tightness and the sharpness of her nails at his back take him shaking into release.

 He is very still for a minute. She is still making small, low sounds and rocking him with her hips, until it becomes too much for him to bear and he pulls away. “Go, Yuffie,” he says roughly, “go back to the party.” She looks up at him with quick, insolent eyes and bites her lip. When she gets up and leaves without looking back, pulling her dress down over her hips, Vincent turns from the sight of her. His fingers are suddenly clumsy as he fumbles with zips and buttons; he has to stop for a moment to press his palms against his eyes. He couldn't be the one to break her heart, but - five minutes too late - he is starting to believe that he will do it nonetheless.

 Yuffie scuttles back down the side of the building, cat-leaping by hands and toes and corkscrew turns, down and down, ahead of the lightning. It's too late, it's in her; she ends up at the balcony to her office, and turns her face to the sky. This could be anger or elation, she thinks; the quivering deep in her belly isn't telling her either way. Leaning against the railings makes her think of Vincent, and she shudders even though the cool press of iron is nothing, _nothing_ like the heat of his body against hers. Her hand snakes down as her knees knock together and tremble to the floor, where she kneels and lifts her face to the rain. But her hands are not his hands, and the dampness on her cheeks is only water, she tells herself, only water.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god, this is so purple and angsty and utterly, utterly not my style that I've been hiding it in a separate folder named "terrible porn". I keep taking it out, looking at it, grimacing and putting it away again. But I wanted something for Vincent's birthday on 13th October, and the only other thing I had around fits Halloween better so... have this instead.


End file.
